William Tuttle: 1912 - 2007

Acclaimed MGM makeup artist

Oscar winner primped, polished and transformed stars for more than 300 films

August 03, 2007|By The Washington Post

William Tuttle, who as head of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer studios' makeup department enhanced the looks of some of Hollywood's most beautiful people and helped design the creepy, human-devouring Morlocks in "The Time Machine," died July 27 at his home in Pacific Palisades, Calif. He was 95.

No cause of death was reported.

Mr. Tuttle's career encompassed more than 300 films as well as the transition from black and white to Technicolor, a development he called "murder" because the intense light needed for the process could melt layers of makeup. As a young man, he worked on the early Technicolor classic "The Wizard of Oz" (1939) with Judy Garland.

He was MGM's makeup chief from 1950 to 1970. For his work on "7 Faces of Dr. Lao" (1964), starring Tony Randall as a Chinese medicine show impresario with many identities, he was the first in his profession to win an Academy Award. An Oscar category recognizing makeup skill did not begin on a regular basis until 1981.

He became known as King of the Duplicators for his way of making a wax mask of practically everyone at the studio. Once he had a facial impression, he would develop character makeup that transformed, for example, Hurd Hatfield from a handsome young man into an aging degenerate in "The Picture of Dorian Gray" (1945).

Mr. Tuttle spent 15 years as assistant to the head of MGM's makeup department during the heyday of the studio system. He fiddled with the faces of MGM's biggest stars, including Katharine Hepburn, Greer Garson, Jeanette MacDonald, June Allyson and Donna Reed, to whom he was briefly married in the early 1940s.

Reed, then an unknown starlet, said at the time: "The first day I went to the studio, they sent me to the makeup department and a makeup man named Bill Tuttle looked me over. He shook his head, mumbled something about what will they dig up next, and then went to work on me. He changed my eyebrows, shaded my chin and made my mouth bigger. He made me very mad.

"Then he looked at me again and said, 'Now you'll do. Except you should change something else.' When I asked him what, he said, 'Your name. It should be Mrs. William Tuttle.'"

While head of MGM's makeup staff, Mr. Tuttle applied his considerable talents on dozens of films a year. They ranged wildly across genres, including "Julius Caesar" (1953), "The Teahouse of the August Moon" (1956) and "Mutiny on the Bounty" (1962), with Marlon Brando as, respectively, the Roman leader, Asian servant and 18th Century British seaman.

For the popular 1960 movie version of H.G. Wells' "The Time Machine," Mr. Tuttle's trip to the monkey house at the San Diego Zoo inspired the fur of the underground-dwelling Morlocks. He also put tiny light bulbs in facial masks to create the spooky electric-eye effect.

"7 Faces of Dr. Lao," directed by George Pal, was Mr. Tuttle's tour de force of makeup artistry. According to "The Films of George Pal," by Gail Morgan Hickman, Mr. Tuttle made watercolors of the seven characters inhabited by Randall and a plaster cast of Randall's head. The cast became the mold from which he created the heads of the distinctive characters.

William Julian Tuttle was born April 13, 1912, in Jacksonville. He was 15 when his father deserted the family, and he was forced to use his skill as a violinist to support his mother and younger brother, Thomas, who also became a Hollywood makeup artist.